Autumn Durald Arkapaw has won the Oscar for best cinematography at the 98th Academy Awards, for her work on Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, becoming the first woman to have received the honour. She is also the first person of African-American descent (Arkapaw is part Filipino and African American Creole) to have won the award. Having previously worked with Coogler on his Black Panther sequel, Wakanda Forever, she said in an interview with Variety, ‘[we] support each other. I’ve learned how to read the story through [Ryan’s] eyes, to understand what he needs to tell and what is important to him’. In her speech, she thanked the film’s cast and crew whilst requesting all the women in the room to rise, saying ‘I don’t get here without you guys.’
Arkapaw prevailed in victory over Darius Khondji (Marty Supreme), Michael Bauman (One Battle After Another) and Adolpho Veloso (Train Dreams). Prior to the Oscars ceremony, she had received a number of critics awards for Sinners’ cinematography whilst having missed out at the Baftas, Critics Choice and American Society of Cinematographers awards. Arkapaw described Sinners’ as a personal project for Coogler, ‘inspired by his uncle […] and his love for the Delta blues.’ ‘I read the script the night before I started shooting The Last Showgirl (2024, Gia Coppola) on 16mm film and was just blown away. It was beautifully written with so much heart and soul and fluidity between genres’, she said.
With Sinners, Durald Arkapaw joins the select ranks of present-day cinematographers who have shot films with IMAX film cameras, also becoming the first female director of photography to shoot 65mm in IMAX format. Whilst Sinners was captured using large format film, Arkapaw divulged that the team’s original intention was to shoot on 16mm film. It then ‘became a 35mm film after Ryan spoke to our VFX supervisor, who suggested a more stable negative was needed for the twinning work of Smoke and Stack.’ Ultimately, the wide 65mm format was decided upon given the director’s knowledge of Arkapaw’s love for anamorphic lenses, given their prior experience on Black Panther: Wakanda Forever as well as excitement at the notion of capturing ‘the wide vistas and emphasising the landscape of the Mississippi Delta’, by the use of the format.
The former notion is well evidenced by the cinematography of Arkapaw’s pre-Sinners endeavour, The Last Showgirl, which was shot to be softer, dreamier and more intimate a film. In honing in on the cast’s female characters, Durald Arkapaw sought ‘nostalgia, saturation and density in the image’. For this purpose, bespoke anamorphic lenses were created by Dan Sasaki, senior vice president of optical engineering and lens strategy at Panavision. The film was entirely shot handheld, with Durald Arapaw deeming it ‘the best way to dance with your actor’.
“Autumn Durald Arkapaw – Sinners” by Kevin Paul is licensed under CC BY 4.0.